A
fter three years as Fermilab’s first
associate director for research, Mike
Shaevitz is ready to saddle up and head
back to Columbia University and Nevis
Laboratories. Shaevitz, a Fermilab
researcher since 1975, will move back
to Westchester, New York in August,
but he’ll make frequent return visits as
a collaborator on the MiniBooNE
neutrino experiment.

The silver Harley, however, is only
symbolic of his expected time on
the road.

“Jeff Bleustein, the C.E.O. of Harley-
Davidson, gave the commencement
address when my son, Dan, graduated
from the Columbia school of engineering
last month,” Shaevitz said. “Bleustein
arrived on campus riding this new custom
model. I got a photo op.”

The charges of the last three years during Shaevitz’s watch have gone well
beyond the ceremonial. Collider Run II of the Tevatron had its official start in
March, 2001; MiniBooNE is anticipating its first neutrino events; the Main
Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search (MINOS) is progressing both at Fermilab
and at the remote detector site in Soudan, Minnesota; the lab is moving
ahead on a new fixed-target program originating at the Main Injector, as well
as following the recommendations of the High-Energy Physics Advisory Panel
in investigating the possibility of a linear collider. The list goes on from there.

“I feel I owe the lab a lot for my career in physics, and I’m glad I’ve been able
to help in this way for these last three years,” Shaevitz said. “It’s been good
to give something back in the way of service to the lab. I feel that we’ve
accomplished a lot, though of course you always hope to accomplish more.”

The position of Associate Director for Research was created in 1999 by
new Fermilab Director Michael Witherell, with Shaevitz the first appointee.
Fermilab physicist Hugh Montgomery has been named to succeed Shaevitz.
Montgomery moves to the second floor of Wilson Hall bringing two decades
of lab experience, including roles in fixed target experiments, in the “old”
Research Division, the upgrades to DZero, terms as both co-spokesperson
and department head at DZero, and as head of the lab’s response to the
severe recommendations of the 1992 review by the Department of Energy
“tiger team.”

Responding to the tiger team report was a
milestone of teamwork under pressure.

“The tiger team examined the entire operation of
the lab,” Montgomery recalled. “They presented an
ocean of findings. The lab had to provide a plan to
respond to those findings. Our response team had
to formulate what the lab needed to do for each
finding, and estimate the cost of doing it. I was
working with very good people—Gerry Bellendir,
Kevin Cahill, Tom Nicol, Rich Stanek, Dan Wolf.
By now these are some of the most senior
engineers in the lab. We completed the report on
time, though everyone had been skeptical about
the target date at first. The consultants who were
working with us called these guys ‘the dream
team.’”

Yet another team-building exercise lay ahead,
on a somewhat different scale. Montgomery was
co-spokesperson of the DZero collaboration, with
Paul Grannis, when the top quark announcements
were made for evidence of a finding in 1994, and
for the observation in 1995. The significance of
the discovery was complicated by the sheer
numbers of collaborating scientists, and by the
communication and review effort needed to bring
nearly 500 voices into accord.

“It was quite challenging and rewarding,”
Montgomery said. “The time scales for a reaction
were not long, given nearly 500 people were all
required to say ‘yes’ before we could make a
move. It was quite a trick, the last few weeks.”
Grannis and Montgomery assembled a review
board of scientists who were not working on top
quark analysis, chaired by Michigan State’s Harry
Weerts, who went on to succeed Grannis as DZero
co-spokesperson.

“Email had matured by then,” Montgomery said,
“so we made strong use of email communications
to tell people what we were doing, what stage we
had reached, and inviting them to contribute and
comment. The collaboration stretched from Europe
to Hawaii.”

For the 1995 discovery announcement, Grannis
gave the talk at Fermilab and Montgomery gave
the presentation at CERN, where he had worked
before moving to Fermilab.

“It was gratifying,” he admitted, “to go back to the
lab you had left ten years earlier, and say, ‘Hey,
we found the top.’”

Montgomery retains British citizenship, along with
much of his North Country accent. His origins are
in Middleham, a village in the cheese-producing
region of northern England. The village grew from
a castle built around the 12th century, which is still
standing. Montgomery described the environs as
“six hundred people, six hundred horses, one
castle, two chapels, one church, and four pubs.”
His interest in physics grew from helping his
instructor assemble lab equipment in secondary
school (his starting class numbered 11 girls and
five boys). He studied at the University of
Manchester (“…and I support Manchester United,”
he added quickly, staunchly establishing his soccer
loyalties). At CERN, he was spokesman for the
European Muon Collaboration before moving to
Fermilab in 1983.

Montgomery (universally called “Mont”) also
organized the 2001 series of “Line Drive” lectures,
highlighting issues involved with a linear collider
as the possible next “big machine” for high-energy
physics after the inauguration of the Large Hadron
Collider at CERN later this decade. He said he
is encouraged by the increased interest and
enthusiasm for a linear collider evident in the
last year, with university groups willing to
participate in research and development for
the machine, as well as in its experiments.

Fermilab is a major participant in LHC, building
components for the accelerator and major
structures of the Compact Muon Solenoid,
and Montgomery saw a challenge ahead in a
new experience for Fermilab physicists.

“We don’t have a great deal of experience with
large numbers of Fermilab scientists working
outside Fermilab,” he said. “But we’ll have our
scientists working remotely at CERN, while we also
serve as a host hub for analysis, for computing,
maybe even for physics here in the U.S.”

But Collider Run II of the Tevatron is the research
priority.

“Fermilab has a very big physics program, and
with its collider and neutrino experiments, one
can argue that it’s the strongest in the world,”
Montgomery said. “We have the highest-energy
machine in the world until the LHC. It’s our duty to
exploit that capability. It’s also tremendously
exciting. The physics potential is very high. We
must execute well and exploit what we have, with
very much a feet-on-the-ground approach. It will
not require a 20-year vision, but it will require
careful nurturing to maximize the results, given the
limited resources felt by all the labs. Maintaining
the right balance, looking for the right opportunity,
and enjoying the ride—that’s no mean feat.
Looking to make the maximum of the opportunity—
that will be my goal.”

Shaevitz will be an active and enthusiastic
participant, teaching at Columbia and continuing
his neutrino research.

“I’m happy Mont decided to take up the reins,” Shaevitz said. “He’s a good choice with a lot of
experience at the lab. And it looks like Fermilab will be the center of the universe
for the next ten years. It looks like most of the important physics in our field
will come out of here. The Tevatron collider has such enormous potential in both discovery and
measurement. The lab will also be the center of neutrino physics. It seems like a particularly good
situation, and it was nice to be able to work on making it happen.”